If anything, the $49 million Kent State Center for Architecture and Environmental Design - which will house programs in architecture, landscape architecture, interior design and related fields - has turned out even better than plans and renderings indicated it would.

And that's a very good thing for KSU, for Kent and for architecture in Ohio.

The KSU building is also the most distinguished postwar building on a largely bland, sprawling campus, where meandering roads and parking lots often seem to smother any sense that architecture matters.

As such, the building signals a welcome shift in thinking at Northeast Ohio's biggest state university.

KSU's architecture program has made many important contributions to the region through its satellite Urban Design Collaborative and urban design graduate program in Cleveland, which now also offers a master's degree in landscape architecture.

Thanks to the new project in Kent, the same quality of thinking is having a palpable effect on KSU itself, and on the city's downtown.

A walk around the building

Entitled "Design Loft," the new building is a magnificently detailed rectangular block of glass and brick located on the south side of a campus esplanade extending from South Lincoln Street and the traditional western edge of the university toward downtown Kent.

As the esplanade descends gently toward the central business district, the building rises from two to four stories, increasing in height to reach a crescendo at its western end, which acts like a beacon visible from downtown sidewalks a third of a mile west.

Project Details

What: Kent State University's Center for Architecture and Environmental Design.

Bands of glass and brick step diagonally higher and higher as the building extends to the west, virtually outlining what's going on inside.

On the north side of the building's ground floor, an internal street parallels the esplanade, joining a cafe, an auditorium and a library with glassy facades that look directly outside to the neighboring walkway.

The upper three stories of the building's interior, where some 800 students will labor at sturdy wood and steel work tables, are connected by overlooks and cascading staircases.

Spartan, light-filled interiors

There are few frills in the rough-and ready minimalist interior, characterized by raw concrete and white walls. But the school's roomy, interconnected studio spaces are flooded with natural light that pours in through clerestories and bay windows that angle diagonally outward from the north facade.

By enabling students to see each other's work, the building's long interior vistas should engender competition and community. The pervasive transparency also connects the school to the world outside, which architecture is meant to serve.

Inside and out, design principals Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi made the building a treasure trove of lessons for budding designers.

For example, the bands of brick that sweep across building's facade in diagonal layers combine flush areas of traditionally laid bricks with vertical ribs of brick that are spaced narrowly or widely to create shadows, texture, depth and an almost musical sense of rhythm.

The warm textures and earthen tones of the bricks, made by Canton-based Belden Brick Co., appeal to viewer's sense of touch, while the angular glass portions of the building's exterior celebrate optical effects of transparency and reflection.

Upending expectations

The architects also treated areas of brick like a hanging skirt raised at ground level to reveal glass facades of the interior walkway and library. This peekaboo technique upends the normal expectation that bricks should rise from ground level like a stack of blocks piled on a foundation.

That's a lesson in fresh thinking.

The spirit of discovery extends fully into basement heating and cooling plant, where ducts, fans and pipes circulating water from thermal wells are neatly organized and labeled like an illustrated textbook on mechanical systems.

In addition to its thermal system, the building includes sustainable features such as a radiant floors, recycled materials and operable windows, all of which make it eligible for a Platinum rating under the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED system, short for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.

Apart from the lessons it embodies, the new building is the result of critically important processes that included the town-gown collaboration that created the esplanade, and KSU's wise use of a global design competition to pick Weiss / Manfredi with Richard Bowen Associates of Cleveland as the design team.

Outgoing dean Douglas Steidl, who will be succeeded by Mark Mistur, formerly of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, did an excellent job shepherding the KSU project.

Imperfect landscape

If there are disappointments here - and there are - they stem from the mediocre design of the esplanade itself, which features cliches such as clunky, faux classical planters, bishop's crook lanterns, pole banners and a cheesy archway that frames a pedestrian-level view of the new building at the new western entry to the KSU campus.

The lesson here is that it's never enough to get the architecture right, which KSU unquestionably did. The project would have been even better if the fresh spirit that animated the building extended to the landscape around it.

That raises the question whether the university fully understands what it has accomplished here, and how it could fully capitalize on its great achievement.

Let's hope it does, and that the new architecture school is truly the beginning of something wonderful for the university, not just an isolated moment of excellence.